Irish travelling home via Holyhead for Christmas make ‘costly’ new arrangements
Irish travelling home via Holyhead for Christmas make ‘costly’ new arrangements
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Irish passengers who had planned to travel home via the storm-damaged Holyhead ferry port this Christmas are having to make “costly” new arrangements due to its closure. Damage to the busy ferry port in Anglesey, North Wales, during Storm Darragh earlier this month is feared to be worse than originally thought, resulting in its closure until January 15 at the earliest.
All ferry services between Dublin and Holyhead are currently cancelled, affecting thousands of Irish people travelling home from the UK for Christmas. Kim Ward, a paediatric nurse from Co Monaghan, has had to make costly alternative arrangements to travel home with her dog Ziggy.
The 28-year-old, who lives in London, had initially planned to travel by train and ferry from Holyhead to Dublin. After learning that she could not travel from Liverpool as a foot passenger, Ms Ward and her partner Shannon Foley decided to drive to Liverpool to catch a ferry with Ziggy.
Ms Foley, also a nurse, has borrowed her cousin’s car and will drop them in Dublin before crossing back to Liverpool and driving back to London to work. “I was supposed to go on December 21. It’s normally a 12-hour journey, door to door, so I get the train from London and travel as a foot passenger,” Ms Ward told the PA news agency.
“I have a pet cabin to bring the dog into, because over the years I put him into the kennels and he’s just been traumatised. “I called Stena Line multiple times over the last few days to see if there was any way that I could get an earlier ferry on one of the other routes from either Fishguard or Liverpool.
